Could you share the details on the plant capacity?

Well basically this new plant is built along with an existing one. The new one has a capacity of 5 million litres and extendable to 12 million with some minor changes made to this facility. Whereas the existing plant is about just over a 7 million litres.

Could you shed some light on the basics of this facility?

So we have 3 different plants here. We have a very small batch plant that gets scaled up in small production rounds. Then there is a refinish plant for the auto collision and now that we started today is a high temperature, both solid and water born plant for light vehicle and our commercial vehicle customers.

What is the employee strength for the facility?

The number of employees is about 2oo for the entire facility and this number changed recently as we added staff for the new plant.

How would you describe Axalta's business involvement with India?

In case of our India business we are currently in the middle of a five-year spending and that would be around US $ 70 million on facilities, R&Ds, tech centers, training centers and also business acquisitions. We are likely to see a comprehensive growth in the next 15 to 20 years in India.

How crirical is the Indian business for you globally?

So if you look at the Axalta business today this year we are going to have US $ 5 billion as our revenue and Asia Pacific is about 18% of that. So for the next 5 year we are expecting the Asia Pacific to increase to 20%. Aslo in Asia Pacific we are growing double digit right now and we will continue to do so in future too. I think India is an emerging market outside China and looking forward at our business, we would have 2/3rd of the company's growth coming out of India and Asia pacific region.

What are your expection from India to deliver to the Axalta's overall business?

We dont look at India as a country but as a region because we are beginning to do export out of India right now. We look at India as a high quality-low cost place to manufacture, so we are looking to build capacity here in order to serve the best in the Indian market. Also I think we would grow much faster, when the export reaches to the Middle East, North Africa and Australian places in south east.

The good news for India is that, while comparing with other parts of the world India is farely pro business with availability of good raw material, workforce and the skill set.